pediatric dentistry

Yesterday we had a dentistry double whammy. Madge at 4, Coco at 4:30, and we got home around 6. Julie got to participate vicariously because we have new cell phones and I can now send pictures. So she received an image of Coco with shades on (to guard him from the light which he called “the fire” – so you can already guess how he felt about the whole event) and Mr. Thirsty in his mouth (which the kids get to operate themselves).
Madge has a good attitude towards the whole thing. Perhaps it helps that the first time she had a filling (on a tooth that has since fallen out) they gassed her up with laughing gas and the whole room was bluish to her and, well, she was high for a while. But now she loves going.
Coco, not so much. As far as he’s concerned, a doctor is a doctor, and no matter how friendly they appear, their sole purpose, the thing they get paid to do, is to invade your privacy if not cause actual pain. But he’s brave and wills himself to sit still. And after a while he realized that, while uncomfortable and intrusive, it’s not necessarily painful.

Here, though, is why I even started writing this. While I know it’s not right of me to instinctively side with Coco in their disagreements, I know why I do it. Like him, I was the youngest, more specifically the younger brother of big sisters.
So I hope you’ll be proud of me for not interfering when I overheard the following (about the toys they got at the dentist’s) from Madge.
“Let me see that [toy fairy that you’ve been playing with while I was reading]. No. That one’s mine. Yours is the one with the broken sword. But don’t worry. It’s not broken much. Bring it to daddy. He can fix it.”